Improve the site, or pay a monthly retainer?

Both are legitimate uses of the same money, and businesses choose between them mostly on who called them last. There is a better way to decide, using figures you already have.

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If visitors arrive and do not convert, spend on the site first, because a retainer sending more traffic to a page that loses people is the most expensive way to make a small improvement. If the site converts and simply nobody arrives, ongoing visibility work is the sensible spend. The order matters more than the choice.

The question underneath the decision

There is one diagnostic that resolves most of this. Look at whether people are arriving. If reasonable numbers arrive and almost nobody enquires, the site is the constraint. If almost nobody arrives, visibility is the constraint.

This sounds obvious and is skipped constantly, which is how businesses end up paying monthly for more visitors to a page that was never going to convert them.

What a retainer is good at

Ongoing work suits things that are genuinely ongoing: publishing, competitor movement, technical maintenance, local visibility, and responding when the market shifts. None of those are finished tasks, and treating them as one-off projects is why so many sites decay after launch.

It also suits businesses that have no intention of doing any of this themselves, which is most of them, and that is a perfectly reasonable position.

What a one-off improvement is good at

Fixing conversion is largely a project rather than a subscription. Rewriting the message, adding evidence, shortening the form, fixing the phone number, building the missing service pages: these are things you do once and then benefit from indefinitely.

They also improve the value of any future traffic, whether it arrives free or paid, which is why doing them first makes everything spent afterwards work harder.

Questions to ask before signing anything monthly

A retainer is a long commitment and deserves a short interrogation. The answers tell you more than the price does.

  • What specifically will be done each month, and who does it?
  • What will you report, and will it be enquiries or only rankings and traffic?
  • Who owns the work if we stop: the pages, the accounts, the data?
  • What happens in month one, and what happens in month six?
  • What is the notice period, and what does leaving actually look like?
  • Can you show work for a business like mine, with a name attached?

The reporting trap

The most common disappointment with retainers is not effort, it is measurement. Reports full of impressions, rankings and traffic can rise steadily while enquiries do not move at all, and everybody stays busy and pleased for a year.

Insist that the report leads with enquiries and calls. If a supplier cannot or will not report on those, that is worth knowing before you commit rather than after.

The sequence that usually works

Fix conversion first, since it pays fastest and improves everything afterwards. Then invest in being found, because now the visitors it brings will actually turn into work. Then, if you still have capacity, consider paid traffic, which is worth more per click than it was at the start.

This order also spreads the cost sensibly: each stage funds part of the next, rather than committing everything before you know whether the site can convert at all.

How Licheo is arranged

The work covers all three parts, building, being found, and converting, rather than only one, which removes the usual argument about whose responsibility a poor result was.

We report on enquiries and calls rather than on impressions, and we say plainly when a figure is not available. The price is given on a first call, since the right scope genuinely depends on the business.

Part of a larger guide

This page is one part of Website ROI. The other parts:

Questions people ask

Should I improve my website or hire a marketing agency?
Check whether people are arriving. If they arrive and do not enquire, fix the site first. If almost nobody arrives, ongoing visibility work is the right spend. Paying for traffic to a page that cannot convert is the expensive mistake.
Are monthly retainers worth it?
They suit genuinely ongoing work: publishing, competitor response, technical upkeep, local visibility. They disappoint when the reporting is about impressions and rankings rather than enquiries and calls.
What should a retainer report include?
Enquiries and calls first, with the pages behind them, then whatever supporting detail helps explain movement. A report that leads with traffic can look excellent while the business gains nothing.
What should I ask before signing?
What is done each month and by whom, what is reported, who owns the work if you leave, what the notice period is, and whether they can show named work for a business like yours.
What is the right order to spend in?
Conversion first because it pays fastest and lifts everything after it, then visibility, then paid traffic if you still have capacity. Each stage helps fund the next rather than committing everything up front.

Spend in the order that pays

Build, be found, convert, all in one arrangement, reported against enquiries and calls rather than impressions.

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